Testnet for Elections Was Created on NEM Blockchain in Ukraine

Published on08 Aug. 2018

The test voting was created at the beginning of July as a result of cooperation between the Service of the State Registrar of Voters Oleksandr Stelmakh and NEM Ukraine team. Embedded modules of NEM blockchain made the test voting possible.

We used NEM blockchain to keep the protocol information from the local election commissions about the count of votes during the presidential elections of 2014. It proves that blockchain technology provides endless possibilities in social and political spheres and opens up the new perspectives of development,

Oleksandr Stelmakh shares the details of the experiment on his Facebook page. One of the key useful properties of blockchain is the impossibility of changing the saved information and the decentralized data storage on its multiple nodes. These properties were used to save the voting protocol information from the elections of 2014.

NEM blockchain allows a user to create his own assets (mosaic). Also, the structure presupposes the field for messages which one can attach to the transaction (it should be no bigger than 1Kb).

A corresponding mosaic "el-pres-2014:prtcl-25-05-2014" was created in NEM blockchain for protocol data recording. The information from all 29215 DVK (local voting committee) protocols was recorded in the field “message” of the equivalent transaction and sent to the address "TA4TPE-XWZT7R-QX5HL3-5RARFD-6Y7L7Z-MVIJF2-YZFO." One protocol - one transaction,

Also, NEM blockchain has a well-developed API, so you can choose the most convenient format of data.

The experiment was carried out in the testnet, and test coins were used for transactions. They were provided by the NEM Foundation representative in Ukraine. Testing space of NEM blockchain has 28 nodes.

In case of using public NEM blockchain - and these are 589 nodes - the transaction initiator will automatically pay approximately 0.3 XEM for every transaction out of 29215. Today, the price of 1 XEM is $0.14. This way, the estimated price of voting results within every local committee in the public blockchain will cost 8765 XEM = $1227. As for me, it’s not a big sum for the lifetime storage of such socially important data,

- the head of State Register says.

The news about voting via blockchain caused positive hype in the social media. Oleksandr Stelmakh added:

If we really manage to record every vote, one should use a hybrid model of the blockchain. The votes of the electorate will be recorded to the private/corporate blockchain, with the subjects of the elective process, public organizations, and international observers as the nodes. After the count, the voting results should be recorded to the public blockchain through the lens of committees, administrative units, and constituencies. The votes should be kept until the next elections. This way, we can avoid commission expenses on transactions of every vote.

Stelmakh says that a 20-year experience in the sphere of digitalization of the election procedures allows improvising on-the-go. They created a program that took the results from the official website of the Central Voting Committee and wrote it down to the blockchain. Andrii Versal and Oleksandr Furko also took part in the experiment. The voting is still open and anyone can participate.